It’s been a little over a week now since Commissioner Tim Finchem announced the PGA Tour’s new television contract for 2007-2012, and the fallout continues.

Here in FBR Open territory, the damage seems to be minimal. Next year, The Golf Channel will provide early round coverage, as it will for other official Tour events (the exception being the four major championships). On the weekend, NBC will step in to do the final two rounds of the FBR, with CBS taking a one-year hiatus for the Super Bowl before returning in 2008.

Still, there is an unknown factor regarding the FBR: How much of the purse will it be expected to pick up in 2007? Will it be its current contribution -- 38 percent -- or will the Tour expect more?

Mike Haenel, the tournament director for the 2006 FBR, and the Phoenix Thunderbirds, the civic group that sponsors the FBR, are anxiously waiting for “the final word’’ to filter down from Finchem.

“It’s hard to say what it all means yet,’’ Haenel observed. “If it’s less than the last (television contract), the Tour might come to us and say, ‘We need you to kick in 50 percent.’ If that’s the case, the purses over the next six years will probably stay pretty much the same, and we might have to decrease our contribution to charity ($5.8 million last year).’’

Either way, the FBR is basically bullet-proof, an anomaly in that it raises millions of dollars for charity without Tiger Woods in its field. Other Tour events are not as fortunate.
According to Golf World, the average purse is approximately $5.3 million, or very close to the $5.2 million that the FBR pays out. If the Tour dropped its 62 percent share down to 50 percent, a tournament sponsor would need to come up with an additional $636,0000. For the record, many tournaments have an annual charitable donation less than the $636,000, and therein lies the dilemma.

What was the deal really worth? Was it $1.9 billion, as Finchem insinuated when he said it was worth essentially $600 million over the past six years? Or was it more like $1 billion over six years, the same amount the Tour had got for the previous four years? Why would Finchem repeatedly dodge the question during his press conference?

To that, Gary Van Sickle of SI.com, wrote: “All you need to know about the changes is this: They all stem from the basic fact that the PGA Tour, even with Tiger Woods, is not a hot property. The September wrap-up (the new Fed-Ex Cup) is a surrender flag to college and pro football, which the Tour can’t compete with on TV. Even NASCAR is a hotter TV commodity than professional golf.

“The second truth is that there are two kinds of PGA Tour events -- those with Woods and those without. . . . . He casts such a big shadow that the events he plays in dwarf the ones he doesn’t.’’

Another huge question is, how will The Golf Channel, which essentially has replaced ABC, ESPN and USA -- the three networks that lost over $100 million on golf over the past four years -- pan out? Besides early round coverage, TGC also gets four-round coverage of the first three tournaments and the last four tournaments of the season.

Frank Hannigan, the former U.S. Golf Association official who is highly respected within the industry, had this observation: “Finchem’s enthusiasm for The Golf Channel replacing ESPN and USA is like a guy who has been driving BMWs for years coming home with a Hyundai and proclaiming to his neighbors, ‘Come and see what a terrific thing has happened to me.’ ’’

And finally, will the new network deal, coupled with the subsequent new schedule that moved around such events as the Players Championship while establishing the season-ending, big-bucks Fed-Ex Cup, improve sagging TV ratings in the future?

Chances are, no. As Hannigan pointed out: “For the Tour to find and command a new audience would require a freakish event, like a hermaphrodite dwarf becoming leading money winner. And it would help if the dwarf’s caddie could be Anna Nicole Smith.’’

OK, so maybe it’s not really THAT bad. But by trying to hide the numbers, Finchem created more negative publicity than had he just said, “Well, boys, we didn’t do quite as good as we did last time around.’’ Hey, there’s nothing wrong with admitting that professinal golf on TV peaked in 2000-2001, the period in which Woods snared the Calendar Slam, and has been waning ever since.

Say what you want about the PGA Tour being a hard sell on TV, but the bottom line is it has nothing to do with the Tour’s popularity. No, it’s all about the cold reality that most of the nation’s 27.4 million golfers -- 90 percent -- would sooner play the game than watch it.